It seems possible the trouble you're running into with the topics you mention-- discrimination and death-- is that they are less conflicts, in and of themselves, than thematic elements. And if you're writing about ideas, it's more challenging to shape together a story instead of an editorial: a sto...

Update from HuniePot Dev: https://twitter.com/HuniePotDev/status/997979877977436160 I have just received word from Valve apologizing for the confusion, saying to DISREGARD their previous e-mail about the violation, that they are in the process of re-reviewing the game and will follow up soon. I shou...

Update (May 19): Update from HuniePot Dev: https://twitter.com/HuniePotDev/status/997979877977436160 I have just received word from Valve apologizing for the confusion, saying to DISREGARD their previous e-mail about the violation, that they are in the process of re-reviewing the game and will foll...

A few things: First off, I think it is perfectly fine to have "obvious" contradictions. If you want the case to ascend in difficulty (starting off easy, then gradually becoming more and more difficult), simply place your obvious clues closer to the beginning of the case. This can give the player the...

Hey guys, it's been awhile since I posted an update, so to catch you up on recent developments: We have a Steam page! You can add the game to your wishlist or follow the game on Steam to get notified when it releases later this year. We're getting really close to being complete in terms of gameplay ...

One of my favorite ways to get away with repeating a certain fact or idea is to keep approaching it from different perspectives and angles that add something other than restating the fact. Example 1: We learn in chapter 1 that Alice is frequently late to meetings. In chapter 2, Bob states, "Alice is...

One phrase I often find myself repeating amidst forum advice is "tools, not rules." We often tend to take advice that emerged as, "Hey, this is something that's helped me in my writing, and it's helped a lot of other writers as well" and parrot them as these universal maxims. Things like "Don't use ...

Thanks, I know I have depression and I am being treated. Perhaps I should just relax and let the treatment work before taking on huge workloads? When you use the phase "huge workloads," it makes me question how you're approaching this. What is your goal? When you're a working professional with dead...

I'm a big fan of stealing ideas from real life. The experiences of real people are often more interesting, varied, and rich than what you'll find in the pages of fiction -- the universe is bigger than the human imagination, so I'd prefer to draw inspiration from that. As an example, one of the games...

I'm a bit surprised by the responses to this thread. "Love interests doing things that the audience (and main character) hate" is a common staple of romance novels, and often the basis for things like "drama" and "romantic tension." Most people don't like a "flawless character," and a lot of the bes...

I tend to judge "purpleness" of prose not based on length, but on necessity. Purple prose is redundant. It draws attention to the prose, in a bad way that draws attention away from the thing that you want to describe. For example, here's a paragraph from Stephanie Meyer (one of the Twilight books) t...

Usually, in the first draft or outline of a story, I find myself writing two kinds of scenes: 1. The scenes that are there because they are awesome. These are the scenes that are enjoyable in and of themselves, and they are the reason that I want to write the story in the first place. Maybe it's a b...